


Paradise I'm Lost You Guys

by BadHidingSpot



Series: Teen Wolf Book Club [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-09
Updated: 2015-11-09
Packaged: 2018-04-30 20:07:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,667
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5177990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadHidingSpot/pseuds/BadHidingSpot
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>The tenses are really really fucked up you guys! Sorry!</p>
    </blockquote>





	Paradise I'm Lost You Guys

**Author's Note:**

  * For [steamcurious](https://archiveofourown.org/users/steamcurious/gifts).



> The tenses are really really fucked up you guys! Sorry!

Paradise I’m Lost You Guys

Lydia is tired of being the only one prepared, the only one to re-read the book more than once, and the only one to bring notes to every meeting. This time she trades out reading the book for baking a snack (themed to the book of course because she’s not a barbarian) and making notes for just browsing SparkNotes online. She is not going to speak more than a few times, she decides, on each topic, and when the club eventually devolves into banter and flirting and oh-so-obvious mooney eyed stares she will take her snacks and leave. The plan is to leave with Allison but Allison has taken her own car and Lydia is not sure how to organize a pick up and drop off situation.  
They’re meeting at Scott’s again because Isaac has picked this book. Lydia knows the situation is strange between them. Isaac must be suspended somewhere between roommate and boyfriend. Having Scott’s ex-girlfriend come over every month can not be easy for him.  
Lydia remembers a time when Isaac, stammering and unable to make direct eye contact, asked her out. It must have been freshman year, the first day of class because that was when she got all of her invitations from young boys who, all throughout middle school gave her longing looks as she sported make up perfectly before any other girl and learned to walk in heels sooner than them too. Lydia loved to stand out and she didn't’ mind the attention she received for it. But back then, back in middle school, it had been better because the attention was distant and non-intrusive. Once high school began every class period had a sweaty confession or a note pressed into her locker with a poem written in barely passable English. She mentally tried to count how many boys it had been that day but the number was large and she had forgotten most of the faces. Almost all of them had been boys that sat behind her in class. All of them, except, Lydia remembered with a quirk of her lips, Stiles Stilinski who made no secret of his affections but also made no pressuring invitations. Stiles was the kind of admirer Lydia preferred, at least freshman year, distant and sincere. Now though, she’d rather have Stiles as he was now: big brown eyes focused on a strapping and violent werewolf. Lydia gave up her pedestal happily to Derek but it was it’s own special kind of annoying watching Stiles stuff his face to keep from saying something embarrassing or dropping whatever he was holding because Derek had (almost) caught him staring. Stiles had been through at least three iPhones this year that he’d dropped and broken. One of them had been on the stairs outside the school because, as they were leaving, Stiles had tripped when he saw Derek and his camaro parked waiting to give them a ride home. He’d somehow found out that Stiles’ jeep was in the shop.  
No it was much easier with Stiles now. Lydia could tease him, if she were so inclined, about his crush on Derek and talk easily with Stiles about topics in their A.P. classes. Stiles was really one of the few people that could keep up with her in conversation and there was a kind of relaxation that came with being able to talk to a boy without the threat of love behind every word.  
Isaac was not like Stiles though, not exactly, in his confession. Lydia, who had noticed that the short skinny boy had had a growth spurt and resulting filling out over the summer, did note the attractiveness of Isaac. Despite that he didn’t know how to hold himself. Isaac had the kind of body that should be held the way Jackson held himself, confident and pushing out the parts he was most proud of. Peacocking Allison had affectionately dubbed it. Instead, Isaac held into himself as if afraid that the slightest movement could cause him to spill out everywhere. His hands were shoved so far down into his pockets that day that Lydia thought the boy was going to disappear into them like in a Looney Tunes episode.  
His speech was easy, if not a little too quiet, and Lydia knew he didn’t mean it. Handsome though he was, Isaac didn’t know how to dress, carry, or express himself to compliment his angelic beauty. He was similar to Jackson in so many ways, but especially in looks with his cut jaw bone and high cheek bones. They both looked like their bones had been forged in the fires of hell and their skin wrapped around them by silk of heaven. It was such a shame, Lydia thought, that Isaac didn’t mean the confession of love. She could have trained him to dress himself, and come out of his shell. She might have even done it happily as a side project. But she could tell with the way his eyes fidgeted and his mouth spoke the words as if rehearsed unwillingly, that he did not really want her. He probably thought he did, in his defense, because he saw that other boys wanted her. He may have recognized that she was the desireable and to want her was normal. But he did not really want her and so she told him the most sincere thing she could think of:  
“Ask me again when you have a bike that doesn’t have a chain.”  
She didn't’ think it was cruel then and she didn't’ think it was cruel now. If Isaac grew up a little, came into himself, explored his own wants and desires instead of trying to grasp at what others told him to want, if then he still wanted her, she would have him. She knew the day wouldn’t come.  
She was happy to see how right she’d been watching Isaac move around the kitchen and living room with Scott; trading off plates and cups as if in a dance only their bodies knew. Watching the little grins and winks shared between them warmed her in the way that being right all along only could. She munched a carrot stick with smug pleasure.  
“Where are your notes?” Allison asked settling her bag down at her feet and next to Lydia. Stiles was not far behind her, reaching over them rudely to grab at the Cheetos on the coffee table.  
“Where’s your computer?” Stiles asked.  
“I didn’t bring either,” Lydia said simply. “I’ve decided to speak only from memory. And-dear god Stiles can you just come sit by the chips?”  
“They aren’t chips,” Stiles corrected, “they’re puffs.”  
Lydia stared at him in annoyance until he put his hands up, mouth stuffed so full of Cheetos that they stuck out of his lips, and moved over to sit between the girls on the floor. Lydia then spied the copy of “Paradise Lost” on the coffee table. It was on top of a yellow legal pad with color coded tabs sticking out of it, several for nearly every page. She pointed to it. “Whose copy is that?”  
“Not sure,” Allison answered taking out her own copy. It was highlighted in some parts but otherwise was not nearly as thoroughly looked analyzed as the table copy.  
“Is Derek here yet?” Stiles asked.  
Lydia rolled her eyes and scoffed. Stiles made a face. “I don’t mean like that. I mean that process of elimination. If he’s here the copy might be his.”  
“I didn’t see his car. He’ll probably be last to arrive.”  
“So it must be Scott or Isaac’s,” Stiles concluded. Lydia pursed her lips unconvinced until the hosts in question came into the room and settled next to each other in the love seat across from her. Their hips and thighs perfectly matched up together, pressing as if trying to feel each other through the denim of their jeans, but other than that they did not touch. At least they’d learned some kind of subtlety. She remembered Stiles complaining about it the other day over PSLs.  
“They’re just always together,” he’d said sneering, “who wants to be around the same person all the time?” Lydia had not answered that stupid question, only given Stiles a telling look. He’d conceded her point. “Okay well who wants to be around Isaac all the time?”  
“Scott,” Lydia’d answered simply and changed the topic to something more palatable and less whiny.  
She glances down at Stiles now, seeing if he is noticing the way the boys are trying to touch without touching, be together without contact, but Stiles is focused on the door with baited breath.  
“Should we go ahead and start?” Allison suggests.  
“NO!” Stiles shouts and then, not lowering his voice at all because that would seem silly now, “WE DON’T HAVE EVERYONE HERE. WE DON’T WANT TO MISS ANY GREAT NOTES.”  
Lydia hears the squeak of Derek’s breaks outside on the lawn and settles close to Allison, their shoulders brushing through cardigans. “You can talk like a normal person now,” Lydia chides Stiles.  
Derek is in the house and settled on the arm chair in minutes his pocket paper back copy, dog eared and practically rotting from age, out and ready to go.  
Isaac looks at Lydia, “Do you want to start?”  
“Me?” She raises her eyebrows.  
“Yeah,” he says bashfully, “you always have really great notes.”  
Lydia, always happy to be flattered, smiles at Isaac and nods down to what she now knows his his extensively noted copy of Paradise Lost. “I’d rather hear what you’ve discovered.”  
Isaac seems unsure until Scott nudges him with his elbow encouragingly.  
Despite having not read the book, Lydia finds Isaac’s notes easy to keep up with and very well thought out. There are a few things she disagrees with fundamentally, whether or not Milton had any kind of homoertoic tension in mind or if it’s all unintentional, but without having read the book in full she feels she should keep her comments to a minimum as she’d promised.  
“I like the description of Lucifer,” Scott chimes in eagerly and Lydia suddenly realizes that it’s the first voice that was not Isaac’s that any of them had heard in nearly fifteen minutes.  
“Where was that?” Derek asks paging through his copy.  
“I don't’ remember,” Scott confesses without shame, “but I know I was picturing him as a kind of glowing beauty. Something too perfect for the world.”  
Lydia feels like she might gag because Scott is staring so hard at Isaac he might just break the other boy’s porcelain face. Isaac blushes and it does remind her of the paintings of the Archangel Michael or Gabriel or any of them really. They all of Isaac’s kind of sharp beauty to them. She allows herself a little fantasy of Jackson as Michael holding the great spear downward and pinning Isaac as Lucifer to the ground just like in Raphael’s “Victory of St. Michael” painting from the 16th century. But then she remembers bruises on Isaac’s wrists in math class and Jackson making cruel jokes about Isaac’s father and she feels a little sick with herself.  
“You’d be such a great Gabriel,” Isaac mutters to Scott.  
“What about the theme of happy fault?” Derek, apparently wanting to bypass this epic poem about Scott’s beauty as quickly as Lydia does, asks abruptly.  
“You mean Adam’s?” Stiles asks. “I liked that part kind of. Especially with all the opposite motifs. You know that light and dark stuff and Adam comes back and talks about how humans can experience those kinds of opposites. You know? Know they know bad stuff but that makes them see the opposites, the good stuff as something precious.”  
Lydia watches from the corner of her eye as Scott links his pinky finger with Isaac’s.  
“That, sure,” Derek says awkwardly clearing his throat, “but also, like, the fault of Lucifer. He rebels and falls and without any of that Adam wouldn’t have brought on the happy fault. I mean you have Adam here taking credit for what Lucifer did. Adam was just one piece in a great plan.”  
“But whose plan, huh? Huh?” Stiles is forceful with his “huh”s and Lydia nudges him with her foot to signal he’s being obnoxious. “I mean is it Lucifer’s plan or is it ultimately God’s?”  
“I think Milton’s point is that it’s God’s. After all he’s supposed to be all seeing right?” Allison answers.  
“A very good point. Mhm. Mhm.” Lydia nudges Stiles again but he’s lost now. He’ll be nothing but assenting or dissenting noises until they leave now.  
“Is there bottled water?” Lydia asks not wanting to stay for any of this.  
Isaac is up quickly. “I’ll get you some.”  
Lydia stands and follows him into the kitchen. Isaac gets the bottled water out of the fridge and turns around jumping when he sees taht Lydia came in after him. He hands the bottle to her.  
“Thank you,” She says opening it. “This kind is my favorite.” She notes taking a sip of Fiji water.  
“I know,” Isaac says a little bashfully. Lydia raises her one questioning eyebrow and Isaac adds, “I asked Stiles. He told me.”  
“You asked Stiles?”  
“I wanted to be a good host.”  
“You’re doing all right. There’s no wine.”  
“Melissa won’t let us-”  
“I’m kidding.”  
“Right. Obviously.”  
“You could lighten up a little. Like you were when you first turned.”  
Isaac shifts and his hands go into his pockets and it’s just like it was Freshman year. Lydia almost reels from the DeJa Vu. “When I was first turned I tried to kill you.”  
Lydia shrugs dismissively. “Well plenty of people have wished me dead out of pure jealousy of the years. I’m not one to hold a grudge on it.”  
“It wasn’t for a good reason,” Isaac mutters ashamed of himself.  
“Is there a good reason to kill someone?”  
“It was because I was mad. When Derek gave the order-not that it’s Derek’s fault!” Isaac said quickly. “I mean he thought you were evil-”  
“Well I did drug him, drag him through the woods, and then resurrect his evil dead uncle after that. Derek and I are evened out I think.” Seeing that his face was still held in a firm self-hating pout she added, “You and I are too.”  
“You can’t say that.”  
“Sure I can. It’s my life. I’m allowed to forgive and forget whatever I damn well please.”  
“I mean that you can’t say that without knowing the reason. The real reason I wanted to kill you.”  
She sighed exasperated. “You’re such a martyr. You really are like Lucifer.” She handed him her Fiji water bottle, pushing it towards his lips and encouraging him to drink. “Stop looking for ways to be hated. There’s no divine punishment coming for you, Isaac.” Softly, very softly that probably not even Isaac’s werewolf hearing picked it up, she said “You’ve been punished enough.”  
He did hear it, she knew, because he paused mid-drink and then, as if it symbolized something much greater than just a drink of water, he took a long gulp. By the time he passed the water bottle back to her, half of it gone now, he was crying, as if he’d needed the water to fuel the tears. He couldn’t stop and she just set her hand on his shoulder and rubbed him kindly until Scott came in.  
“What’s taking you guys-oh! Isaac!” Scott practically knocked Lydia over taking the taller boy’s shoulders in his hands. Lydia passed the buck gladly to Scott and flaunted out of the kitchen back to her seat. She took up Isaac’s copy of the book curiously and started to flip through it.  
“What’s going on in there?” Allison asks softly. She was taking Lydia’s hair in her fingers and braiding and un-braiding it.  
“Just a little cleansing,” Lydia answered simply. She started to read the book, paying special attention to Isaac’s notes.


End file.
